Is personal faith a debatable topic?

I think it'd be better to debate, rather than a particular specific thing they have faith in, the differences between taking things on faith and using evidence to arrive at a conclusion and how the latter can be better than the former.If they can understand the importance there, then if you move into their specific beliefs they take on faith, they'll better understand that arriving at a conclusion from evidence is not you just attacking their faith.Does that make sense?

I don't think that's going to be productive. I think they'll just feel like he is attacking their faith and "turn-off" and just fall back on the faith. Nothing will be acheived.From the previous message:

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I think it'd be better to debate, rather than a particular specific thing they have faith in, the differences between taking things on faith and using evidence to arrive at a conclusion and how the latter can be better than the former.

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If they can understand the importance there, then if you move into their specific beliefs they take on faith, they'll better understand that arriving at a conclusion from evidence is not you just attacking their faith.

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I dunno, does anything ever work here? The important thing is to not be "challenging their faith". They'll shut right off (as it seems you've seen). Take one step back and have that discussion...Why, if so, would they rather have their faith in demons causing disease over the Germ Theory of Disease when the former has provided all of us with nothing and the latter has saved countless lives. Well, they wouldn't, and they don't. Isn't it because evidence and critical thinking are, in fact, good values and faith alone is not? (rhetorical) I say faith alone because they're not gonna accept that faith has no place, but I think they need to understand that the other stuff should be right there with it.I wouldn't take it further to any conclusion towards them totally dropping their faith, because again that's just not acceptable. But get them to realize that they already agree with you mostly, its just these one or two things that they'd prefer not to accept and they are using faith as a crutch.And I'd leave it at that. They can think that over if they want.If they'd really just absolutely would rather have their faith then there's not going to be very much you can do for them.At that point, no, their personal faith is not a debatable topic.

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ABE:In Message 32, JUC said:

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The important thing to do is to make such people think rather than try to convince them by forceful argument. In any case, it's not going to happen overnight. You need to plant seeds of free-thought.

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That's what I'm getting at.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.